No matter what what industry you are a part of, it’s important to provide high-quality information on your site or blog. For example, if your business provides medical services, it’s not a bad idea to publish useful information from the health department, such as news and updates on medical research, health and fitness advice, etc.
To create and publish this kind of information, however, is really time-consuming. You have to do a ton of data sorting, researching and organizing, fact-checking, writing and editing content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually make sure that this information is up-to-date. As you can imagine, this not only involves a huge amount of work but most of the information you are dealing with is entirely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a much easier way to continually provide your site visitors with expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the easiest ways to provide your site visitors with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Is RSS?
- RSS, which, according to some stands for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly referred to as Really Simple Syndication. It can also be referred to as a “feed” or “web feed”.
- After users subscribe to a website’s feed, they no longer have to manually visit and check the source website for content updates. Instead, their web browser will constantly monitor the site and automatically keep subscribers up-to-date.
- Feeds are often used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog posts, news, audios, etc., to which other users can then subscribe.
- You can view an RSS feed using web-based, desktop-based, and even mobile-based programs called feed readers, or aggregators. Aggregators can be used to access new content published on websites and distribute this content (and updates made to the content) to other sites.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and read by different feed readers. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom Publishing Protocol) feeds and RDF (RDF = Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure that feeds are compatible with different machines, readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine different RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from multiple websites.
This in-depth article shows you where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to display someone else’s content on your site via RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful and legitimate method used to share web content. RSS Feeds provide an easy way for online users to keep up with the latest information posted on sites they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at content syndication.
News reporting agencies rely heavily on syndication to publish newsworthy content from news agencies all around the world.
Syndication allows most leading online newspapers to deliver readers global stories and the latest newsworthy content from all around the globe without having to hire additional reporting agencies in every location around the world …
(Many online newspapers rely on syndication to publish newsworthy items from news sources all around the planet.)
Syndication is used to share content legitimately. online media publications syndicate their content using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by digital publishing agencies to share information with other publications)
Most websites actually would like you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content not only allows information to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the original site responsible for publishing the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Major content sites will include a feed section (look for menu links that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “chicago tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many online newspapers and major sites have a feed section. Image: Sydney Morning Herald RSS )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section brings up a directory of different RSS feed sections …
(RSS feeds list. Source: nytimes.com)
gives readers access to content from different sections of the website (e.g. business news, arts news, editorials, etc.)
An RSS feed directory can also contain feed subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Source: LA Times)
Note: An RSS feed is simply a URL. All you have to do to use the feed is to copy the URL and paste it into software that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Content Syndication
Syndicating content from someone else’s website or blog on your website has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s website additional exposure online, it also helps you by freeing you up from having to create that content …
(Syndicating Content Has Many Benefits!)
While adding a feed from another site is a great way to add content to your site without having to create it, it’s worth keeping in mind that there are benefits in getting other sites to syndicate YOUR content.
When other sites syndicate content using your RSS feed, this gives your business the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new visitors …
(Try to get visitors to syndicate your feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
WordPress Feed – Overview
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on the theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme displays the Meta widget in a standard or custom menu …
(The feed page will show the number of items you have specified in the Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in your Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display articles as full text, or as a summary …
(Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for each article in a feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed displays …
(Post excerpts can affect how your feed content displays)
If you need help using Post excerpts in WordPress, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, all you have to do to view a feed’s content is to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that reads and translates feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s see how this works.
First, find a website or blog and search for their RSS feed link …
(Look for a ’subscribe to feed’ link or icon. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL to the clipboard)
If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds.
How To Add RSS Feeds To WordPress Sites
Let’s show you how to add content from other website or blog’s RSS feeds to your WordPress site.
How To Add Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are part of, you could easily display on your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by adding their feed. You can use feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, Facebook updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …
(Add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation area)
copy the RSS feed URL from a website or blog that publishes content that you would like to add to your sidebar to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL)
Next, paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content from the RSS feed can now be seen on your sidebar …
(RSS Feed Added To WP Sidebar)
Add Your WordPress RSS Feed To Search Consoles
You can add your WordPress RSS feed to Google and Bing’s search consoles. This will help them index your content faster.
(WordPress RSS feed added to Google Search Console)
Adding your site’s RSS feed to search consoles is simple, fast, easy, and requires no technical skills. For a step-by-step tutorial, go here:
Adding RSS Feed Content To Your WordPress Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to a post? Yes, it can!
You can do this using WordPress plugins. Search on WordPress.org plugin repository for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for setup instructions, or contact us if you need help with plugin configuration.
Here are some auto blogging tools that allow you to automatically create new with feeds and imported content:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange them according to campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin with premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin is an advanced, feature-filled importer that allows you to add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into your posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you curate, import, syndicate, merge and display full-text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress blog.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full content of every item in the feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed WP Plugin)
POWr RSS combines and displays content from a number of different RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust sizing and spacing of feeds, use custom backgrounds, fonts, colors, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in any language.
The premium plugin edition contains a number of additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, accept or reject posts, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter, export WordPress posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress – WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides flexible syndication for WordPress site content.
As stated in the FeedWordPress site …
FeedWordPress is an open-source Atom/RSS aggregator for the WordPress blog publishing platform. You set up feeds that you choose, and FeedWordPress syndicates posts from those sources into your WordPress posts table, where they can be displayed by your WordPress templates like any other post — but with additional meta-data, so that your templates can properly attribute the post to the source it came from.
You can use this FeedWordPress to create aggregator sites, or display all your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in the URL of your feed, give the feed a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select the blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types – WordPress Plugin)
By default, WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed. Install RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types if you would like to include pages in your RSS feed and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
WordPress RSS – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to giving online users access to RSS feeds of your posts, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of the latest comments posted on your site.
To view these, go to the ‘Meta’ widget area on your sidebar menu (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) and click on Comments RSS …
(WordPress Comments Feed)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users can be seen in the Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed entries as seen on Firefox web browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which web browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed entries as seen with Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image Source: Feedreader)
Note: If the Meta section is not displaying on your theme, you can view the Comments RSS section of your site by opening up a browser and typing in the following URL:
- http://www.yourdomain.com/comments/feed
- http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/comments/feed (if your WP site installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using Single Item Feeds
Being able to use an RSS feed for an individual post can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific posts to RSS directories, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.
The formula for creating an RSS feed for an individual post is shown below:
(Single Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the URL of your post, and add “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of the web address of your post, WordPress will return the comments left on that post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only be interested in subscribing to content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If your site publishes content under various categories, WordPress allows you to provide a separate RSS feed for each of your categories.
Just use the format below:
(Format for WordPress category RSS feed)
Copy the selected category URL …
(Copy the selected category URL …)
Append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(WP category RSS feed format)
Your feed now only contains content posted in that particular category …
(Category-specific RSS feed page)
The WordPress Codex also provides different ways to create feeds not just for post categories, but also feeds for tags, authors, search, etc.
For this example, let’s create a feed for a specific post category using the format shown below:
(Post Category feed format. Source: WordPress Codex)
Here is the feed format WordPress recommends using. In this example, the post category ID is ’42’. We’ll need to replace the post category ID and the domain name …
(WordPress post category feed format)
To find the post category ID, go to Posts > Categories …
(Posts > Categories menu)
Locate the post category you want and hover your mouse over the title to reveal its unique ID …
(Post Category ID)
In our example, the post category ID is ’29’ and the post category feed format we need to use for this specific category with our domain name looks like this …
(Post category feed format with domain name and ID)
Copy and paste the feed into your browser and hit enter …
(Paste the feed into your browser)
This will display the feed for that specific category …
(RSS feed of a specific post category)
Note that in this example, WordPress automatically converted the feed format we pasted into the browser into the category feed we had used in the previous section of this tutorial …
(Post category feed format)
Here is the feed format again …
(Post category feed)
In this case, the simplest way to create additional feeds for specific categories is to simply change the post category slug …
(Change the post category slug to create a new category specific feed)
Paste the edited feed into your web browser and hit enter to display the content for that specific category’s feed …
(Post category feed content)
Now that you have a method for creating feeds for specific post categories (or tags, authors, etc.), you can even create a directory or list of individual feeds for visitors.
Tip #4 – Provide A Feeds Page
You can create your own feeds directory that allows readers to subscribe to content in specific categories …
(Provide Your Own Page Of RSS Feeds For Your Subscribers)
You can also link an RSS button graphic to each feed and then create a table or a list of all feeds on a new page …
(RSS graphic. Image Source: public-domain-photos.com)
If you need help with adding tables to WordPress, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
Feeds can be customized in several different ways, such as adding videos and images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows a number of RSS feed configurations that do not require code editing skills. Here are some examples of feed formats you can display on your site and how to create the feeds …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
Here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Includes your latest post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – RSS feed that displays the latest comments posted on your website or blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that displays a single post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Displays the latest comments made on a post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Displays latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/06/22/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/09/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Feed displaying latest items for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Feed displaying latest posts for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
It’s a good idea to promote your feed. Make sure you place your ’subscribe to RSS’ link somewhere visible …
(Remember to promote your feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that online users will only subscribe to your content if you provide your visitors with very high-quality content that will add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Easily add someone else’s content and get others to share your content using RSS!)
If you need great content ideas subscribe to our FREE content creation course using the form below:
Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed 🙂
RSS – Resources:
- Download RSS Buttons – Visit a site like www.feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS logo download”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free RSS icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization with three primary duties: publishing the RSS specification, guiding developers who create RSS applications and furthering the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org/WordPress Feeds – WordPress documentation. Visit this site for more information about RSS feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to display content from other sites on your site via RSS feeds.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To read more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.
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